(*The blog is no longer being updated regularly due to the civil war in Syria. Should the situation change or any breakthroughs be achieved, I will post it here*)

Summary

My sister, Jacqueline "Nicole" Vienneau, a Canadian tourist, disappeared in Syria on Saturday, March 31st, 2007 at the age of 32. She was in her fifth month of a six-month solo adventure through West Africa and the Middle East. She was last seen by the desk clerk at 8:30 in the morning as she left the Cairo Hotel in Hama, two hours north of Damascus.

She definitely intended to return to the hotel as her backpack was left in her room along with the memory cards from her camera, full of photos. She also left her journals that include an entry made the night before she disappeared. Canadian police retrieved her Hotmail account email records indicating she attempted to login around 8:30 Friday night but was unable to (Syrian Internet connections are not reliable). Her last completed emails were sent Thursday night.

Nicole's guidebook was also left in her room. In the back of her Lonely Planet "Middle East" guidebook she wrote directions to a number of places in Syria that we believe she copied from the Cairo Hotel's copy of the Lonely Planet "Syria" guidebook. Nicole spoke with some guests about these locations earlier in the week and the hotel clerk indicated that on the morning she disappeared, she asked for directions to the "Beehive Houses", a local sightseeing destination, as well as Qasr Ibn Wardan (a nearby castle).

No one at these locations recalls seeing Nicole (and they are not heavily visited) and the Qasr Ibn Wardan logbook has a record of only one visitor, Amin Ben Yahia, a person of interest to us (b. 1984, Algerian/Swiss nationality, father is Abbas, mother is Monica) in hopes that he remembers something unusual about that day. UPDATE: On January 19th, 2019, Amine contacted me. He does not remember anything unusual.

Nicole preferred taking local transit, but none of the minibus drivers or locals remembers seeing her. As a foreigner, Nicole stood out in all of Syria, but particularly in Hama where the majority of women in Hama dress in robes and cover their hair. The streets from the hotel to the minibus pick-up are main streets with lots of people, even at 8:30 in the morning.

In May 2007, I flew to Syria with Nicole's fiancé Gary to re-trace her steps and meet with police and local officials. Gary spent an additional two months criss-crossing Syria searching for clues. My mother joined Gary in Syria in July 2007 and met with the Grand Mufti as well as the Minister of the Interior. She also made a personal plea on Syrian television and we put ads in the newspapers and local flyers. Gary and my mother returned to Syria in April 2008 to raise awareness and follow up on leads with officials and the police.

My mother returned to Syria with Gary for a third visit in March 2009 and we continue to work with Syrian government and police officials on the investigation.

There is up to 2,250,000 Syrian pounds ($45,000) in reward money for information leading us to Nicole.

We are currently looking for other guests at the Cairo Hotel in case they spoke with Nicole. A list is at the bottom of this page.

For pictures of Nicole and what she was wearing when she disappeared, as well as relevant personal information and summaries of the search so far, please visit:

You can always email me directly and anonymously at mattv99@hotmail.com

All comments and emails, public and private, are read immediately, but unfortunately I cannot respond to everyone. Feel free to respond in any language that you're comfortable with, though all of my responses will likely be in English.

March 31st, 2012 (Afternoon):

Today marks five years since Nicole disappeared from the Cairo Hotel or in the vicinity in Hama. Despite five years of searching, we really have no new clues as to what has happened to her, though we strongly suspect one of the hotel staff was involved.

Syria today is very different from Syria of five years ago. There are certainly no tourists in Hama anymore, and there probably won't be any going there in the immediate future either.

Hollywood tells us that stories always have an ending, but unfortunately that's just not true. In those first few weeks we were so confident we'd figure out what happened. And then as each lead dried up the worry in the back of our minds increased, "what if we never find her?". That has turned out to be the case and we may end up being one of those families still searching 20 or 30 years later. You can never really give up.

An old friend of Nicole's has been putting huge amounts of effort into finding her. He's been posting on Twitter and updating a blog with details. You can read some updates here, here, and here.

Other people continue to offer suggestions and take action. It is very difficult to keep up hope after so much time has passed. All we need is one person who knows or suspects what happens to come to us, but they'll probably be in Syria and unlikely to have access to us anymore. Hopefully one day.

"Civil unrest and demonstrations have been occurring in many Syrian cities since March 2011. There has been extensive use of force by the security forces and military in suppressing demonstrations across the country. Many casualties and fatalities have been reported and protests and violent repression are likely to continue. Security operations have involved the complete lock-down of entire towns for periods varying from a few days to a few weeks. This may take place with little warning."

Needless to say, our hopes of getting any information about what happened to Nicole have diminished greatly in the short term.

February 11th, 2012 (Morning):

Syria continues to be in the news as world opinion is slowly being swayed by the stories of what is happening. Once again, no progress on our search as we approach nearly five years since Nicole went missing. To think that at first I thought this could be resolved in five days or at worse, five weeks!

January 7th, 2012 (Afternoon):

Another month of chaos in Syria. In early 2011, the violence in Syria wasn't making the international news very frequently, but that has certainly changed. It is not surprising that we have heard nothing from Syrian officials, Canadian embassy officials, or our own contacts within Syria. This makes it difficult to move forward in the search.

Re: American media

NationalJournal.com appears to be a mostly politics-centered blog, but I wouldn't doubt that Mr. Powers may know people in the industry who may take an interest in publishing the story in the American media.

quick few notes

if it is possible,can you please post the arabic registration form(guest list) for cairo hotel, it is possible that an arabic native speaker ,translate the surnames or names diffrently.we could easily be looking for powell instead of powers...

Re: Powell instead of Powers?

That's a really interesting suggestion. A quick google search for "William and Kathryn Powell + Syria" (and all the other combinations like Bill and Kathy, Will and Cathy, etc) brings back numerous interesting possibilities.

mardis fukse-suggestion

Re: mardis fukse-suggestion

Also for the Lu family, it is very common for Chinese or Taiwanese immigrants to give themselves "nicknames" with American spellings, however these nicknames would not be included on any legal documents. Is it not possible to find them through their passport numbers?

European living in Syria

Really it disturbs me to imagine your pain and i pray for a positive outcome.In the worst case scenario , which you have said sadly is how things seem to be, i would like to ask one question ( and i sincerely hope that this is not the case ).If someone wanted to hide a body quickly they might choose water and i wondered if the famous river Orontes ( i think ) had been searched in the city of Hama.I live in Syria, but don't know if the Police in there search would automatically put Police divers into operation. Sorry to think of such a thing, but its just a suggestion.Our hearts with you.

Doh Middle Names

Why didn't I remember this before? It has happened to me several times in Arab countries - including Syria. For some reason they always take my middle name as either my first name or last name. I think they get confused by the passport layout and how our names are different. (Arabs commonly use their fathers name as their last name and the family name less often).

So you might want to consider these names you are looking for might be a middle name somehow. It has happened to me in both directions. My middle name used as my first name and as my last name.

Re: Doh Middle Names

One more thing, you might want to consider when they wrote down a name that they might have seen an english letter that looks similar somehow to an arabic letter and they wrote the arabic instead. What I mean is, they might read the english ...for eample the letter Z and in their mind they might have thought of the 'k' in Arabic and wrote down a K in english. Does this make sense?

Same with numbers. They might see the number Zero in english and think 5 in arabic and write down five in English because that is how they read it in their head. It happens if one is not paying attention.

So you might want to have someone consider the possible combos and make an alternate list of names and numbers.

I have some close friends abroad who have family in salamiyah. I will get in contact with them so they can get the local gossip from back home. They will definitely tell me anything they have heard.

Faxon

Assuming that the last name has been transliterated correctly, Faxon seems like to good bet for the last name of "Mardis", as it is a fairly popular surname in the U.S. (closely related to Faxen or Foxon or Foxen). The first name is a complete mystery though... I think the above suggestions are good ones - what are the most likely "errors" that might have been made by the person writing the first name?

I am one of the many people (I am sure) who do check your journal often, and I hope you find your answers soon.

Re: Faxon - could it be Jackson?

Matt,I was also thinking that this individual could be: Markus Jackson. The F and J can sometimes be similar in arabic (with the dot being either above or below the line). A hurried writer might make that mistake or not pay attention to his writing.

Re: Citadel Hotel list

That would actually make sense. The letter jeem (soft j) is often pronounced with a hard G in say Egypt for example (but usually the soft j in syria). I could see someone not overly great with english just intermixing the G and J easily although I don't know why they wouldn't just copy it from the passport as it is. Are these lists from passports or are they just the person listening and writing?

I myself will alternate with the pronounciation of jeem as a soft j or a hard g just depending on my mood. As I said however, that is more of an Egyptian thing. Of course this is the Cairo hotel right? Any connection with them to Egypt... are the people working there or owning it egyptian?

Citadel Hotel

I think the first name is Vivian-if you look at the photo of that page, there is the name "Eva" further up-the "v" looks like a "j". Another example is the name listed as "Flajta"-I think it's actually "Flavia". I've already searched on Facebook without success-also myspace, but I didn't think to hyphenate the surname. I'll give that a try.

Vivian

I think you are right - now that I look at the name "Eva" above, I'm also convinced the name is Vivian (or possible Vivien). Robert-Nicoud is a fairly popular Swiss surname - and if you look closely it does look like the writer recorded the hyphen.

So there is a good chance the person is "Vivian Robert-Nicoud" or "Vivien Robert-Nicoud". I looked in the Swiss phone book and there is no listed number under those names.

check with syrian embassies abroad

all non arab entering syria need a visa, no one is getting visa without syrian embassy or immigration authorities getting a photocopy of their passports. so the best you can do looking for those guests at hotels is to contcact syrian embassies in their countries.

Post a Digg button on the top of this page

Matt, I think you should post a Digg button on top of this page to generate more awareness. So many visitors, this thing could go viral. I know it made the front page of Digg a while ago, but perhaps we can do it again.

refugee camps

Hotel

It is strange that no one saw Nicole after she left the hotel. So maybe something happened and she never left the hotel of her own free will. It would be interesting to know if any of the staff has any illegal ties to human trafficking /sex trade or people involved in it. Or even a criminal record. I am curious if anyone has quit working there since Nicole has disappeared.

Suggesting the story to CBC News Sunday

Hey Matt,Good suggestion for others to suggest Nicole's story to America's Most Wanted and The Fifth Estate. I did that... then also made a similiar suggestion to CBC News Sunday here: http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/contact.html.

I know you are desparate to get into the US media, but continued expanded Canadian media can't hurt, as a lot of Americans and ex-pats do watch CBC. I'm hopeful that the folks at CBC News Sunday will simply get curious if they get endless story suggestions on Nicole, and will just have to find out more. I dunno, but it's worth a try.

My heart goes out to you at the six month mark, and your posting about how hard it was for you to see pictures of Nicole. ***Hugs*** I somehow remain hopeful that you will learn what happened.